Winter Wonderland

I've been suffering from an advanced case of writer's block in recent weeks. I haven't been able to focus on much of anything--on writing original poems or writing book reviews for this blog. Yesterday, as I was driving to my mother's house, snow was falling gently. As soon as flakes touched the pavement, they melted. I was inspired. I made up a rough draft of a poem in my head. I forgot to write it down when I returned home. It wasn't a great poem--but it felt good to have my creative juices flowing again.

The poem went something like this:

Snowflakes falling like fairy dust...

I turn my face to the sky,

Cold white kisses

Melting on my cheeks

I took the photographs posted here in December.

I awoke one morning to find a wonderland of white

outside my bedroom window--

so I got my camera and took some pictures.

I may be old--

but I still like winter.

I love to look at the beauty of new-fallen snow.

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Speaking of snow and poetry--

I often shared Dorothy Aldis's poem

On a Snowy Day

with my elementary students.

I liked the imagery she used in it:

Fence posts wearing marsmallow hats...

Bushes in nightgowns kneeling down to pray...

Trees spreading out snowy skirts

I'd also recite Mary Louise Allen's poem First Snow.

Here are the first two lines:

Snow makes whiteness where it falls.

The bushes look like popcorn balls.

Two of my favorite snow poems are mask poems

in which snow speaks to us:

The Snowflake

by Walter de la Mare

Here's how it begins:

Before I melt,

Come look at me!

This lovely icy filigree!

Of a great forest

In one night

I make a wildreness of white...

and

a poem by Karla Kuskin that ends:

I can make anything

Everything

Beautiful.

What I touch,

Where I blow,

Even a dump filled with garbage

looks lovely

After I've fallen there.

I am the snow.

I'll close this post with an original acrostic:

Wrapped

In a robe of white

Numbed with cold

The weary

Earth

Rests

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At Blue Rose Girls, I have Winter-Time by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Anastasia Suen has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Picture Book of the Day.